This paper concerns the effects of methanol extract of Eremostachys laciniata on mild and moderate Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS). Forty patients, including sixty hands affected by CTS, were randomly categorized in two different groups. Group A and Group B were treated with E. laciniata extract and placebo as the ointment, respectively. Tests, including the palmar prehension (pound), grip power (kg), visual analog scale (VAS) and electrodiagnostic study, were performed on all patients before and after the trial. During the trial, all patients receive Sodium Diclofenac (25 mg twice a day) orally. In addition, they utilized a night wrist splint. After four weeks of treatment, the state of mean palmer prehension in both groups improved yet, the statistics show that group A prevailed by (p = 0.01). Grip power increased in both groups as well, but this increase was not significant within-groups (p = 0.18 and p = 0.54 in group A and B, respectively) or between-groups (p = 0.053). Although the VSA decreased in both groups, group A prevailed again by (p < 0.001). After four weeks, no significant electrodiagnostic change was detected between the two groups. According to this study, the methanol extract of E. laciniata can be effective in treatment of mild and moderate CTS in combination with the wrist night splint, especially in alleviating the severity of the syndrome and increasing the palmer prehension power.
In order to manage soil salinity effectively, it is necessary to understand the origin and the spatial distribution of salinity. There are about 120 salt dome outcrops in southern Iran and little is known about their contribution as the potential sources of salts and the spatial pattern of salts around them. Six machine learning algorithms were applied to model topsoil electrical conductivity (EC) and sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) in the Darab Plain (surrounded by six salt domes), Fars Province. Decision trees (DT), k‐nearest neighbours (kNN), support vector machines (SVM), Cubist, random forests (RF) and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) were used as primary models and the Granger–Ramanathan (GR) method was used to combine the predictions of these models. The results showed that remotely sensed data contributed more to predict EC and SAR than terrain‐based data. In terms of root mean square errors (RMSE), Cubist followed by the RF model, tended to give the best estimates of EC, whereas for SAR, RF performed best and was followed closely by SVM and Cubist. Compared to the primary models, the GR method on average resulted in a decrease of 6.1% and 3.9% in RMSE and an increase of 10% and 10.9% in R2 for EC and SAR, respectively. The spatial pattern of SAR and EC suggested that the contribution of salt domes in soil salinization varied significantly according to their hydraulic behaviour in relation to adjacent aquifers and their activity. In general, the model averaging approach showed the potential to improve the estimates of EC and SAR.
Background and Objective:Acanthamoeba is a free-living and opportunistic amoeba found in the water, soil, and air. This amoeba causes granulomatous amoebic encephalitis in the immunocompromised patients and amoebic keratitis in the people using contact lenses. The genotypes of Acanthamoeba are pathogenic and non-pathogenic. Regarding this, the present study aimed to determine the frequency and genotypes of Acanthamoeba in the water pools and ponds of Khorramabad, Iran, using culture, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and sequencing methods in 2016.
Materials and Methods:This study was conducted on a total of 84 water samples collected from the water pools and ponds of Khorramabad. The samples were filtered using nitrocellulose syringe (0.45 μm); subsequently, they were cultured on 1.5% non-nutrient agar, covered by killed Escherichia coli and incubated at 27ºC. After the extraction of DNA from positive samples, PCR was performed using specific primers to detect and confirm Acanthamoeba. Then, for genotyping, the PCR products of positive samples were sequenced. Results: Out of the 84 water samples, 50 (59.5%) cases were positive for amoeba in the culture method. However, the results of the PCR revealed 35 (41.7%) positive samples for Acanthamoeba. The sequencing of the PCR products demonstrated that 17 samples were T4 genotype (pathogen), and the rest were other Acanthamoeba genotypes. Conclusion: This study indicated the high prevalence of Acanthamoeba species, especially the pathogenic type, in the water pools of Khoramabad that could be a source of infection risk for humans. Regarding the fact that almost half of the found genotypes were pathogenic (genotype T4) that are the main cause of amoebic keratitis, these water bodies could be a potential risk factor for the public health. Therefore, the health professionals should prevent contamination.
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